Spend Them Kindly

Death in the Family

So it’s official. After getting a bit of pool water splashed on it, my phone is dead. Well, it’s not entirely dead, but I don’t have a display, which makes it as close to dead as you can get, and it’s been two weeks, so I think it’s as fixed as it’s going to get.

People have been so helpful, suggesting rice, specific types of rice and time frames that the phone should sit in said rice. My favorites are the people who have told me that their phone went through the wash machine AND dryer and ended up drying out just fine. Thank you very much. I guess my phone is a delicate flower. It can’t even handle a little splash.

Aside from being completely out of touch with everyone and what is going on, I can’t take pictures, tell what time it is or figure out what there is to eat near me. I’ve been using paper directions to get places, for goodness sake. It’s downright archaic.

I can hear when I get a text, my phone will ring, and I do still get earthquake alerts, but I can’t see who’s texting, who’s calling or where the earth is shaking at. How am I ever going to know if the big one hits? After two weeks of trying to be patient and having dreams about my phone working (yes, I have actually had a dream that I plugged my phone in and it worked. Sad, I know.) I finally gave it a full charge up and decided to see if I could get Suri to work for me. After all, blind people use cell phones, right? So if they can manage to use them without the displays. Surely I can work this out.

After several requests, and Siri telling me that she was ‘Very sorry, but I can’t help you right now. Try again later’, I finally got her to tell me that I had 9 voice messages. She dutifully played each one. I was so excited to hear my voice mail that I didn’t even care that PODS left me two REALLY LONG automated messages. I was connected to the world again. Next I asked Siri about my text messages. She said that I had 97 messages from 19 people. Wow. Hopefully nothing urgent!

Siri then started in on the first message, which was my Twitter feed. I have Twitter set up to send me a text notification of a couple of the people that I follow on Twitter. It was pretty amazing, listening to Siri relay these messages. It sounds something like this: “Ellen DeGeneres T-Witter at Ellen DeGeneres. Check out my friend’s solo CD. Happy New Music Monday! h t t p colon back slash back slash ellen dot tv backslash 1 z y 9 j j 9″ but in Siri’s special voice and in her special way of mispronouncing things. T-Witter. Seriously. I was crying with laughter.

It got better from there, as I listened to Siri relay messages from friends and family. Cliff hangers, such as: ‘You’ll never guess who I ran into today’ – I can’t guess, and I still don’t know! Then serious texts that turned to comedy in Siri’s computer animated voice, ‘What am I supposed to do besides sit at the pool all day and drink?” OMG. This is amazing. And what is wrong, exactly, with sitting at the pool all day drinking?? I mean, as long as your phone stays dry. And my favorite, “The cheap flight is gone. Crap. Is your phone working yet? Call me. Is your phone working? Is your phone working? Text me. Is it working yet? Crap.”

Yes, it was highly entertaining. I still think I might be heading to the store for a new phone though. After all, I need to know where those earthquakes are happening, and it would be nice to be able to take selfies again.

Post navigation

6 thoughts on “Death in the Family”

Reminds me of Weird Al–If you haven’t already heard the new Weird Al version of “Problems of First World country” run and get a copy or app or whatever way you get your music. Also on Y-Tube. Hilarious.

You are cracking me up! The rice didn’t work on my phone, so I made stir fry with it. I might have a memorial service for my phone, but I have to write an obituary first. Wearing black for mourning is a no brainer. I’m a hairdresser. We love black.